Facebook Has a New Way to Track and Collect Data in Texas. Here’s How to Turn it Off

Anytime you go online to do anything in Texas, you are being tracked by someone. This information is used to send out advertisements to everywhere you go online in the hopes you will purchase a product or service. Some companies will take that collected data and then sell it to a third party to do the same thing. It's all about making money for someone other than you. Facebook is an app many of use on a daily basis who does collect our data. There is a new way they're tracking Texans but can easily be turned off.

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Facebook and Data Tracking

Facebook faced some backlash from users and had to go in front of Congress a few years ago because of a data collecting practice that went too far. This caused Facebook to have to inform you exactly what data they were collecting and allow you to download a file showing the data the social media giant collected from you. If you downloaded that file, you saw that basically everything you typed and almost every photo you shared, whether on Facebook or sent through Facebook messenger, was saved even if you deleted it. Scary stuff for a lot of people.

Link History

There is a new feature on Facebook called Link History. In the background of the Facebook app is a web browser that tracks the sites you visit on your phone. This will allow Facebook to send targeted ads to you through the app as you're scrolling through your feed. If you didn't know, Facebook is more than just Facebook, the company, known as Meta, also owns Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp and Quest VR. That collected information is used in all of those products to send you targeted ads (KETK).

How to Turn it Off

As is pretty much required nowadays for any legitimate online company, the ability to have information collected is left up to you and can be turned off. Same for the Link History feature of Facebook. You may have gotten a prompt after opening the app telling you what was going on and if you wanted it on or off. If you haven't, you can still turn it off by following the directions below:

It takes less than 2 minutes to do and will put your mind at ease knowing Facebook won't be collecting as much data from you as before.